


Catocala sappho

by starcunning



Series: Erebidae [8]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: 'Praxis inordinata', Nabriales is mentioned, Other, Psychic Bond, Queerplatonic Relationships, Soul Bond, and 'Acherontia atropos', approximately concurrent with, being an ascian is so much office politics, lensha IS the main wol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2020-08-23 06:57:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20238646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starcunning/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: Lensha turns then to look at her, fixing her with luminous eyes. They are the color of the First, flooded with light, even her pupils made bright by chatoyance. “Why you?” she asks.“It was thought that I was better suited for this particular assignation,” Igeyorhm says. “Lahabrea can be … volatile.”“And you are steadier,” Lensha says, tone flat with disbelief.Igeyorhm sifts through the reasoning in her mind: Lahabrea is stronger than she is, being of the Source, and put to better use elsewhere; Lahabrea is more objectionable. These things answer the questionwhy not Lahabrea?but speak nothing on the matter ofWhy Igeyorhm?There is, of course, the simple fact that she arrived first; there is also the fact that she treated successfully with the champion of the Thirteenth. Too well, in fact. Igeyorhm puts the memory aside. It has been a long time since that place—and Shemhazai—became something other than what they once were.She is seeking redemption in the eyes of Zodiark, she admits to herself. She must do now what had failed her before, and redeem herself thereby.





	Catocala sappho

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seraphicrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphicrose/gifts).

> Further [imports from tumblr.](https://starcunning.tumblr.com/post/182833274974/catocala-sappho) This fic was done as part of a private fic exchange between friends, and concerns the requester's Warrior of Light, Lensha Hathaar, to whom Kallisti is an adventuring companion. Lensha was unable to defeat Lahabrea at the Praetorium, and bargained with him to join the Ascians' cause at a later time in exchange for Thancred's freedom.
> 
> _Catocala sappho_ is also known as the Sappho underwing.

The mortal world reeks. She, in her absence, has forgotten this; there are more pleasant reminders than fetid water and mold, but such are the circumstances. It was the confluence of aether that alerted them, the surge of light energy—Hydaelyn intervened directly but rarely, and always this was a situation that merited investigation by one of their number.

It was supposed to have been Lahabrea. Igeyorhm realizes this the moment she sees Hydaelyn’s Champion alone in the darkness. He has crowed about it enough in the Chrysalis, preening with self-assurance despite the fact that it cost him his mortal vessel. Well, Lahabrea is not here, and Igeyorhm is not minded to await him.

“Lensha Hathaar,” she names the other woman.  
“You are not Lahabrea,” says the Warrior of Light.

She looks like a ghost, pale as moonlight in the dark of the sewer; the only tell that gives the lie to her ethereality is the dark water that stains her white robes. Igeyorhm can see the light that strains against the bounds of her mortal form—she is untethered from Her blessings, Igeyorhm surmises at once, but she is undimmed, and far brighter than the champions of the Thirteenth.

“I am not,” confirms Igeyorhm, “but your bargain was not with him alone, but all our party.” Igeyorhm extends a hand.  
Lensha looks at her a long moment, and takes it only after a period of introspection marked only by the dripping of water down the dank walls. There is no sound but the Miqo’te’s breathing and the rush of water, and then there is only the latter and the pair are gone.

* * *

Lensha does not accompany her to the Chrysalis when Igeyorhm makes her report. Lahabrea is there, though, and he is not happy.

“She was to be my project,” he snarls, intemperate as ever.  
“You have a project,” Igeyorhm reminds him.  
“Yes, and you were supposed to be helping me with that!”  
“I did,” Igeyorhm shrugs. “Ysayle Dangoulain has abandoned the purposes of Light and seeks to enact the will of her goddess, incarnate in her. She no longer needs me.”  
“I had been assured the situation with the Archbishop was well in hand,” agrees Elidibus, looking loftily down at them both.  
Igeyorhm is surprised he is not of Lahabrea’s party; both are of the Source, after all. But that has not always meant kinship, though Emet-Selch is similarly pliant to the Emissary’s whims. “Did you require my help in the city proper, Lahabrea? I would hate for you to disappoint us all,” Igeyorhm says. The frostiness of her tone leaves the _again_ unquestionable.  
His choler rises. “I do not need a subordinate that seeks to usurp me,” he snaps.  
“Enough,” Elidibus says. “Igeyorhm, will you not surrender the Champion?”  
“Not to him; not willingly,” Igeyorhm says. “She knows him, and has reason to distrust. She has no greater reason to distrust me than any one of us, and I am between projects, as I mentioned. Iceheart was a success, was she not?”  
“For now,” Elidibus agrees. “Lahabrea. Are things proceeding in Ishgard?”  
“Yes,” says the Paragon, clearly annoyed at being backed so thoroughly into that corner.  
“Then Igeyorhm is right. You may ask Pashtarot to aid you, if you are so sorely pressed.”  
“I’ll take it under consideration,” Lahabrea says, clearly having already dismissed the idea.  
Elidibus dismisses him with a wave, his avian mask swinging about, regard settling on Igeyorhm once more. “Any other concerns of note?”  
“Where is Nabriales?” Igeyorhm asks.  
“I had not thought you so inclined to his presence,” the Emissary notes with lofty amusement.  
“Do not mistake me, I am glad enough not to see him here, but he had an identity established in Ul’dah. From my earliest inquiries, Hydaelyn intervened to save one of Her chosen after assassins were loosed upon a party she attended. Nabriales should have known of this. Nabriales should have spoken of this. Thus I must ask: where is Nabriales?”  
“Where indeed,” mutters Elidibus. “I have my suspicions, but I should return to Garlemald anon.” Elidibus’s lips press into a thin line of displeasure, and then he lifts a white-gloved hand, dismissing her to her new duties.

* * *

Lensha watches the Floating Isles with impassive eyes. She does not move, does not even flinch, when Igeyorhm materializes at her side. Her aether ripples; that is all. Its wan white humming tendrils stray a long way from her corporeal form; she is half out of her body, nearly a ghost in a living body. Igeyorhm was not aware she still had a heart, but something in her throbs with sympathy.

“You are back,” Lensha says, and there is no emotion attached to the notion. “I could have fled while you were gone.”  
“Yet you did not.” Lahabrea would have treated the situation with less subtlety; were he called away to Ishgard or elsewhere, he might have poisoned her and left her to sleep until his return. Deudalaphon would have called upon the Lessers to stand by and attend her. “You could be far away on wings of aether by now,” the Ascian of the Thirteenth notes.  
“Nowhere so far gone that you could not follow,” Lensha says. “This was your cohort’s doing.”  
“I had thought so, but Nabriales is absent, and not likely to be involved.”  
“Nabriales,” the Champion of Hydaelyn echoes. “I had been assured he was no longer a threat.” Her annoyance bristles, the spines of a great leviathan breaching the surface of placid waters. Like that fin, her emotions stretch, spread, and sink once more into the murk. “Would you know if he were dead?”  
“Eventually. Perhaps that explains his absence, though Elidibus did not seem to think so.”  
“And Lahabrea? I had been told he was not dead.”  
Igeyorhm smiles. She settles beside Hydaelyn’s Champion, who shies from her—not bodily, but her aether shrinks, withdraws, so that shadow does not touch light. “He is not,” Igeyorhm admits, “alas.”

Lensha turns then to look at her, fixing her with luminous eyes. They are the color of the First, flooded with light, even her pupils made bright by chatoyance. “Why you?” she asks.  
“It was thought that I was better suited for this particular assignation,” Igeyorhm says. “Lahabrea can be … volatile.”  
“And you are steadier,” Lensha says, tone flat with disbelief.  
Igeyorhm sifts through the reasoning in her mind: Lahabrea is stronger than she is, being of the Source, and put to better use elsewhere; Lahabrea is more objectionable. These things answer the question _why not Lahabrea?_ but speak nothing on the matter of _Why Igeyorhm?_ There is, of course, the simple fact that she arrived first; there is also the fact that she treated successfully with the champion of the Thirteenth. Too well, in fact. Igeyorhm puts the memory aside. It has been a long time since that place—and Shemhazai—became something other than what they once were.

She is seeking redemption in the eyes of Zodiark, she admits to herself. She must do now what had failed her before, and redeem herself thereby.

“Ah,” says Lensha. “So it’s penance.”  
Their aether has not intermingled; Igeyorhm can feel no such violation. “Your goddess told you this?”  
“People are not so difficult to figure out,” Lensha says, turning her face away. She delivers this judgment with disdain—with scorn, even—but Igeyorhm cannot find it written in the skeins of white that trail from the Warrior of Light’s body like a shroud. “What happened to the Thirteenth?”  
Igeyorhm looks to her, trying to discern cruelty in the shape of her mouth, the white folds of her gown, the twitching of her tail. Igeyorhm is familiar with every tell—with Mitron’s stolid judgment and Altima’s lofty superiority—and she looks for them in Hydaelyn’s Champion. There is nothing of the type written there. The question is merely the question, born of curiosity and not the desire to reopen old wounds.  
“It would be easier to show you,” Igeyorhm says, because even to unhostile ears it seems such a task to tell.  
“I cannot compel that,” Lensha says.  
“I can offer it to you,” the Ascian tells her, taking down her hood.  
Lensha nods. Her bright eyes rest upon the dark crystal that glimmers at Igeyorhm’s throat.

Igeyorhm reaches for her—not with hands or body, for the flesh is the merest nothing, but with all her being. Shadow brushes light for the first time and Lensha gasps. Igeyorhm hushes her, but she too is hesitant.  
“Your Goddess grants you insight,” Igeyorhm says, “and you pass the boundaries of another’s soul. Reflexively you have a way to return to yourself, something of your own being to anchor you. Focus on that now.”  
Lensha nods, placid as the pale moon, and Igeyorhm reaches for her once more. Lensha is so exposed, her aetherial being extending so far past the boundaries of the flesh; it is so easy for Igeyorhm to reach into her. She has practice, and with it, finesse; her darkness is not overwhelming, but trickles slowly into that vast whiteness. Similitude interlinks them, and they commingle slowly. There is more to Lensha than light and ghosts; her bitterness is the bitterness of brine. She is the sea and the tides, and Igeyorhm the storm that stirs the waves, darkness shot through with light in flashes that only illuminate the beauty of the tempest. Igeyorhm is not of the Source, and can never compete with the Source’s power, but she can bolster it, commune with it. It is and is not like mingling with Shemhazai, who was like the breath on her cheek. This is an intimacy so long foregone that for a moment Igeyorhm loses herself in it—and Lensha has a natural ability; without instruction she reaches for Igeyorhm. Moonlight through clouds, white spray on a black sea; water and wind and lightning whirl and combine in the stillness between them.

Then they are one landscape with two histories. The Champion of Light, sore-pressed and forgotten, bargaining her very being to save friends who may be dead anyway. The Champion of Darkness, too easily victorious, obliterating all she once loved.

The Thirteenth was her home and her heart and her doom, too ripe with umbral aether to ever be saved by the lantern-lights of Hydaelyn. All that had been was lost but its champions—one of them taken from that place by Elidibus, subordinate to the Emissary’s will. And the Warrior of Light that had failed to oppose her—the Warrior of Light whom she had loved, and defeated just the same—had been twisted by Calamity. Shemhazai could not recall the very concept of live, much less her beloved, and yet Igeyorhm had never been able to bring herself to eradicate this lingering trace of her failure. Sooner die than kill, and repent forever of her victory.

Lensha relinquished her hold upon her crystal, pouring the last of herself into this joining. Igeyorhm, too, let go; in the commingling of light and darkness the Martyr found compassion as deep and wide as the oceans. Sorrow like rain, tears like seawater; impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. Her purpose accomplished, Igeyorhm began to withdraw, remembering who she was—the place she had been born, the first time she heard her God’s voice, the oddities that set the Thirteenth Reflection apart from the Source it derived from.

Lensha did not move, did not reel away in turn, and it fell to Igeyorhm to rebuild herself, to sort her own being from Lensha’s so that the Champion of Hydaelyn could collect herself by process of elimination. With the last spark of darkness in a heart of light, Igeyorhm reached out for her, and saw there the trouble: Lensha’s identity was crafted of a thousand _no_s and no _yes_es. Hers was a being of negation, and Igeyorhm longed to weep, but she had long since forgotten.

Her tears were on the Warrior of Light’s cheeks anyway; Lensha’s pale aether hung unbound around her. Igeyorhm reached for her, setting a hand upon her shoulder and pulling her against her side.  
“It is overwhelming, I know,” Igeyorhm said gently.  
Lensha only blinked, as though oblivious to her own weeping, but she did not lift her head from the Ascian’s shoulder. Those silver eyes closed, and her tears dried.

Still, at the heart of her, Igeyorhm could taste the salt sorrow of the sea.


End file.
